CPPLA SP20 SHADEscape Studio DIGITAL BOOK
SHADEscape is a comprehensive street enhancement project - a system of SHADE creation towards lowering the temperature of the city. The project’s goal is to inspire and incentivize more shady streetscapes, providing shelter for those who need it most. The Street-Design-Kit must address this goal beyond bus stops and consider the logistics of how/why people circulate in urban spaces in consideration of public health and well-being. Thus, the project should include all-inclusive, accommodating, advantageous, useful and supportive factors/elements rooted in an enriched pedestrian experience.
The SHADEscape Street-Design-Kit aims to be a decidedly adaptable, modular system of built and natural components, facilitating modified configurations to adjust to each site, reflecting the local culture’s streetscape. In further resolving the Street-Design-Kit requirements, students developed SHADEscape with innovative strategies providing a consistent visual identity, enhancing the streetscape and engaging the culture of their sites. In developing a vocabulary of SHADE, street-design-kits:
Manifest shade and shelter as a public resource – a kind of infrastructure for L.A.’s hottest and most vulnerable communities, while enhancing the quality of life for all.
Create an outdoor space that is comfortable to use all year round.
Portray an expressive symbiosis with the natural environment.
Inspire community cohesion and invite the discovery of culture, stimulating a dialogue with nature in the urban context.
Are ecologically and culturally sustainable, transforming the landscape to illuminate the community’s history.
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Provide protection from visual thermal glare, direct UV light from the sun, as well as indirect UV light from reflective surfaces.
Are part of a comprehensive urban planning and landscape architecture streetscape strategy of shade creations and urban cooling.
Function as a refuge of physical, mental and social well-being, mitigating heat stress effects and offering personal comfort.
Solicit contemplation from users on ecological systems, human habitation & comfort, energy and water resource consumption and production, and/or other concepts climate change.
Integrate into the surrounding environment and landscape, solving the problem(s), addressing public health.
Students had the rare opportunity to consult with Los Angeles City officers who in positions of influence regarding shade creation and tree canopy. The following individuals generously devoted their time and expertise to the SHADEscape students at mid-term and/or final presentations:
Kat Superfisky: Urban Ecologist, Citywide Policy Planning, Department of City Planning
Rachel Malarich: City Forest Officer
Rachel O’Leary: Executive Director of CityPlants
Danai Zaire: Urban Design Studio (UDS) Planning Associate
Nina Phinouwong: StreetsLA Planning Assistant
Rubina Ghazarian: DOT Supervising Transportation Planner
Nora Chin : Deputy Chief Design Officer, Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti
Christopher Hawthorne: Chief Design Officer, Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti
Rachel Hamilton: Student Architect, Bureau of Engineering, City of Los Angeles President, AIAS USC Chapter
Ana Tabuena-Ruddy, PLA: Landscape Architect II, Engineering Services Division, StreetsLA, Department of Public Works
Melissa Lam: Architectural Associate, Bureau of Engineering, Department of Public Works
Lance Oishi: StreetsLA, Department of Public Works
Audrey Netsawang: StreetsLA, Department of Public Works
Bryant Fairley: Director, CPP Center for Community Engagement
Sam Bloch: Author of ‘Shade’ (Places Journal)
